STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 325 



products, while the operative labor of the country is bcinoj directed to 

 their development to an unwonted dea;ree, the activity manifested among 

 miners themselves exceedinf^ that of late years. 



After the experience had elsewhere, the conviction seems to obtain 

 with all classes that California presents the most eligible field for the 

 emploj-ment of both labor and capital of any on this coast. The advan- 

 tages peculiar to this State are not confined to the generally su])erior 

 character of the mines, but include also those of greater securit}^ to life 

 and property, facility of transportation, the more cheap and certain pro- 

 curement of subsistence and supplies, and every auxiliary required in 

 carrying oh the business of mining. All the sta'plc articles required for 

 conducting this calling with success, labor excepted, cost from one to 

 five hundred per cent more in the State of Nevada than here — the dis- 

 parity of prices in more remote localities being still greater; while in the 

 matter of legal securit}^ the difference is equally strong in favor of Cali- 

 fornia. Gold bearing quai'tz can be worked in this vState for six dollars 

 per ton, while in Nevada it costs from fifteen to thirty, and in Idaho still 

 more; the additional expense attending the business in these ])laces 

 being chiefly on account of the greater cost of material, the disproportion 

 between the prices of labor being not in the same ratio. While laborers 

 receive three dollars per day in the mines of California, they get from 

 three and a half to five in these other places — the average price in 

 "VVashoe not being over three dollars and a half. On the other hand, 

 wood at Virginia City costs fifteen dollars per cord, and lumber eighty 

 dollars per thousand, while in the mining districts of this State the ave- 

 rage price of the former is about three dollars and the latter twenty 

 dollars. Throughout the interior of the State of Nevada, first quality 

 lumber sells at one hundred and seventy-five dollars, and inferior at one 

 hundred and twenty-five dollars per thousand, the price in some locali- 

 ties being even more. The expense of transporting most cheap or bulky 

 machinery from San Francisco to Eeese Eiver equals its prime cost; the 

 freight on lumber amounts to seven or eight times as much as its price 

 at the mills; and so of many other articles that might be instanced in 

 illustration of the marked disparity between prices in this State and 

 those prevailing in other localities, all tending to show the greater facili- 

 ties existing here for the prosecution of mining in its several branches, 

 at least so far as cost of material is concerned. 



Looking over the operations in this department of mining, as carried 

 on the past 3'ear, we find comparatively little has been accomplished in 

 the more southerl}^ sections of the country. In Arizona, owing to the 

 hostilit}^ of the Apaches, work in most of the interior districts has been 

 suspended, the miners beino- oblii>:ed to leave their claims. In the 

 vicinity of the Colorado River, however, and in one or two other locali- 

 ties, as about Prescott, the capital of the Territory, and at El Dorado 

 Canon, a small population has remained; and a number of mills taken 

 into these places the past spring and put up, have since been running 

 with good average results. Not much work, however, has yet been 

 done on the ledges, and all that can be said of the most of them is that 

 they prospect well on the surface in both gold and silver. About Wick- 

 enberg and Prescott, in the interior of the Territory, three or four quartz 

 mills arc now at work, and, according to report, doing well. One or 

 two other mills are also on the way to that point ; and vv'ith security 

 against Indian depredations, there is no doubt that the business of 

 mining would soon be revived and become active over a good portion of 

 the Territory. In the, El Dorado District, situate west of the Colorado 



